Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

That they don't transcend their state as full characters unto themselves-- and indeed that they have no discernible purpose beyond being vehicles for the tragic ending-- is exactly why I am calling it sorrow porn. I absolutely think that the book did not earn the sense of grief you are left with at the end.

A book about loss is one thing-- a book calculated to make you feel and revel in a sense of tragedy is completely different. It's a very manipulative book, and I found myself disliking it more and more as I kept reading because I could predict the forms its manipulation would take. I can respect it for being well written and doing a good job of what it does, but I don't like what it does because it aspires to nothing higher than just insert reader's attention-->sadness.

So basically what I'm saying is that it's not a bad book, but the only aim it has is to beguile you into feeling a sense of loss and tragedy, which is why it is sorrow porn.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Regarding sorrow porn, there is one particular trope that annoys me to no end. And that is when any work of fiction will foreshadow a sorrowful conclusion, or a particularly emotionally draining event, will actually go through it only to then magic it out of existence. It does not happen in literature all that much, thankfully, but manga/anime is rife with this. The worst offender includes bringing back the character from the dead even if makes little to no sense. It is as if the creators want us to emote, feel sad, and all that but are not actually committed to take it to a logical conclusion and so will bend the laws of physics if need be in order to provide a happy ending. They want to eat the cake and keep it at the same time.K-drama also revels in this and in many ways outdoes manga/anime, at least in some 2D settings a supernatural resurrection is at least possible within the fictional universe. But K-drama will have people disappear in the middle of ocean only to appear alive and well a couple of episodes later, so much so that I already know that no-one drows in such shows unless there is an actual body. Same goes for ragining fires where someone (bonus points for a little sister but a loved one also counts) will be presumed dead, be mourned at length and then, lo and behold, they pop up out of nowhere.

YamPuff wrote:

I'm currently reading Life of Pi. It's not the kind of novel I would ever read, it seemed like one of those hokey spiritual inspiring stories. I hang out in the library during my breaks at work rather than the teacher lounge (to avoid socializing, of course) and one day I found the book sitting on the couch where I normally hang out. I picked it up, leafed through it and got hooked. It's quirky and humorous and I look forward to reading it every day when I have a free class. I have not checked it out of the library. and, not knowing if the book will still be there for me to read on any given day is part of the appeal for me somehow.

I really liked this one as well, the ambiguity of the whole thing kept me very interested. But it amused me how in the narrative framing the narrator is struggling to write a novel that takes place in Portugal during the 40's and upon settling for Pi's narrative instead comments that no-one would be interested in such a story anyway. I beg to differ but then again I am very bias since I am Portuguese and while we have loads of literature about and during that particular period which was the height of a Fascist dictatorship, very little of it is written by foreigners. So a fresh and potentially different insight would be greatly appreciated. Not that I did not enjoy Pi's oddball lifestory, of course, it is just that I personally would also like to read the narrator's ideas about Portugal during Salazar's regime.

YamPuff wrote:

Finally, The Drawing of the Three, the second book in the Gunslinger series by Stephen King. I got audio books of the whole series and the reader is really good. I've been wanting to reread the series for a while but don't really have the time, so an audio book was the next best thing. It's great seeing all the foreshadowing and in-depth world-building all the way from the start (for example, I don't think they pick up the Billy Bumbler until book 3, but the species is mentioned in book 1). Not only that but MAN is there some grade A level homoerotic tension between Eddie and Roland.

This makes me want to reread the whole DT again if only for the homoerotic vibes that I admit to having completely missed the first time around.

YamPuff wrote:

Nocturnalux wrote:

And speaking of porn, I just read the thus far published volumes of Captive Prince by C.S Pacat. I went into it expecting steamy gay porn but was very pleasantly surprised. While it does show its manga influences (the author has herself admitted that Ai no Kusabi and Berserk were two major influences), it goes beyond the seme/uke cliché and manages to build a very interesting relationship between the two main characters. The fact that the relationship develops slowly enough to be believable and the way a potentially very porny premise- in which a betrayed prince literally becomes the sex slave of a prince from a rival nation, complete with hidden identity and all- is explored to actually explore the characters took me quite by surprise. Add to that a well thought out plot full of intrigue and political scheming.

OoooooOOOOOoooooooh

*reaches for credit card*

Now is the time to get into Captive Prince as the final volume of the trilogy is about to be released. I just pre-ordered my copy the other day.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Nocturnalux wrote:

Regarding sorrow porn, there is one particular trope that annoys me to no end. And that is when any work of fiction will foreshadow a sorrowful conclusion, or a particularly emotionally draining event, will actually go through it only to then magic it out of existence

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Nocturnalux wrote:

YamPuff wrote:

Finally, The Drawing of the Three, the second book in the Gunslinger series by Stephen King. I got audio books of the whole series and the reader is really good. I've been wanting to reread the series for a while but don't really have the time, so an audio book was the next best thing. It's great seeing all the foreshadowing and in-depth world-building all the way from the start (for example, I don't think they pick up the Billy Bumbler until book 3, but the species is mentioned in book 1). Not only that but MAN is there some grade A level homoerotic tension between Eddie and Roland.

This makes me want to reread the whole DT again if only for the homoerotic vibes that I admit to having completely missed the first time around.

YamPuff wrote:

Nocturnalux wrote:

And speaking of porn, I just read the thus far published volumes of Captive Prince by C.S Pacat. I went into it expecting steamy gay porn but was very pleasantly surprised. While it does show its manga influences (the author has herself admitted that Ai no Kusabi and Berserk were two major influences), it goes beyond the seme/uke cliché and manages to build a very interesting relationship between the two main characters. The fact that the relationship develops slowly enough to be believable and the way a potentially very porny premise- in which a betrayed prince literally becomes the sex slave of a prince from a rival nation, complete with hidden identity and all- is explored to actually explore the characters took me quite by surprise. Add to that a well thought out plot full of intrigue and political scheming.

OoooooOOOOOoooooooh

*reaches for credit card*

Now is the time to get into Captive Prince as the final volume of the trilogy is about to be released. I just pre-ordered my copy the other day.

I've purchased first two volumes. I'm a little bit sad how vanilla it is, and that despite the slave/mater thing she doesn't actually go into any BDSM. But then. After Ai no Kusabi and Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty most things seems vanilla. It gives me the feel of very naughty YA fiction - waaaaay better written than Twilight or 50 Shades, around the level of Cassandra Clare perhaps. I can certainly see the AnK and Berserk influences. It's quite fun to read.

I don't know if it's just me reading too much into Eddia & Roland (wishful thinking) but I felt they touch each other a lot and they're really close - like, really close. Eddie is checking Roland for a fever, and it's written 'Eddie gently pressed his hand to Roland's face Roland did not flinch from the touch' and Roland wanting to 'comfort' Eddie when he's crying. Compare the development and set-up of their relationship, how long it takes, how nuanced it is - to Eddie's and Susannah's and it's like :/ hmm

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Given the basic premise Captive Prince is often described as 'erotica' which it most definitely is not. The first volume is fine, the second one is much better as the politicial intrigue reaches new heights of complexity. It also expands the universe where the story takes place and has some very satisfying character development moments.

Whether one reads any homeorotic subtext in The Dark Tower or not, Roland and Eddie's relationship is much more interesting than virtually anyone else's. It does take a lot of time to develop and has a lot of contradiction and nuance. I completely agree that the whole Susannah/Eddie thing cannot possibly compare, I thought it was almost forced.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

There is also Roland and Cuthbert, back in the day. Granted Cuthbert does not appear all that much but the whole 'true companion' thing is very easy to read more into. And Roland does think Eddie reminds me of of Cuthbert as it is.

And on the subject of 'no homo', I am almost done with Mind Fuck that is all homo (with the occasional bi reference). I suspect the name does this one a disservice, it comes across as porn when it is actually a dystopic sci-fi thriller novel that also features a few gay sex scenes. The setting is borderline Orwellian, there is a mandatory highly repressive government known as 'the Administration' (that also gives the name for the series of novels of which MF is the first volume) complete with jailing, torturing and even re-programming less than normative elements of society. Our main character is an interrogator so he is an expert at inflicting pain and reading people, a volatile combination from the getgo and made so when he clashes with the developer of a virtual reality simulator that may be killing its users.

The 1984 influences are obvious, from the general premise to the way some terms are shortened (there is a department that goes by 'Int-Sec', for example) but it has a more sci-fi approach, the sim stands out in that regard. Of course, MF is hardly half as ingenious nor is it interested in exploring social implications but it does very well in placing a thriller in a nearish future.

Perhaps the highlight is exactly the relationship between the two main characters. There is enough friction and mutual attraction to keep it interesting.

Despite the title and the overall premise, thus far it has been quite vanilla. The narration becomes exceptionally vague during the interrogation sessions and the sex scenes are brief and mostly consensual. And given that in this universe there are borderline magical drugs and all sorts of pain inflicting devices, of these being very familiar to the MC, it is almost surprising how none of that has yet to play a part in the sexual arena. Then again it is still book one out of seven.

My main issue is that Toreth, the main character, at times relapses into stupidity. Having a character who has no qualms with torturing political dissidents is no excuse for making him have fits of dumbness. These occur usually when any lengthy explanation is involved and I suspect are there for the reader's sake but time and time again Toreth will ask Warrick, sim creator extraordinaire, to explain things that he really ought to know. But it is a minor problem, really, and on the whole I am surprised at how much I am enjoying this one. Bonus points for also having female characters who can hold their own, it is not all that rare for m/m focused fiction to forget almost entirely about women or to give them the short end of the stick.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Finished Invitation to a Beheading the other day. It was...strange. Abstract, indeed, and relentless in the way it drives towards its point. At times it feels like a collection of sketches rather than a novel, until the final few chapters, which definitely emerge as a continued narrative, and reference what comes before to add a sense of resolution. It feels Kafkaesque, although I probably can't say that having read very little Kafka; what really struck me, in terms of style, is how little it resembles Lolita, although their being composed in different languages probably contributes to that.

I tried starting War and Peace, but (surprise!) I found it a little dry, and I can't get myself motivated to continue just now. I've started Ubik instead to keep myself occupied.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Started reading Guns, Germs, and Steel. Pretty interesting book that seeks to explain why some cultures are more advanced than others by chronicling human history right from our divergence from apes millions of years ago to the modern day.

Last edited by BunB (02-02-2016 04:50:50 PM)

Must the sign of the negative proposition be constructed by means of the sign of the positive? Why should one not be able to express the negative proposition by means of a negative fact?

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Finished Laurell K Hamilton's Bloody Bones, Karen Cogan's A Relative Matter, and Mary Shelley's The Last Man on the planes and in the aiports going from Vermont to Weihai.

I'm building my way - deliberately slowly and with stuff between - back up through the Anita Blake books, because when it goes full porn and goofy, I want to have built up an immunity to things. Unfortunately, I remembered most of this one, and the surprises are, probably, its strongest feature.

A Relative Matter is a sweet regency romance with absolutely zero surprises and, you know what? I needed that. I have a soft spot for regency romances, despite being completely turned off by the royalism/class-focus in things like Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey. And, sweet romance tickles me, for some reason. I read enough stuff with heavy sex in it, or swearing and brutalizations, that a novel wherein kisses are the height of exciting passion and there are only like eight kisses total, all occurring on their own separate special occasions is silly, but silly just in the right way.

And, The Last Man still stands as one of my favorite novels. Weird, thorough, full of purple prose and deep thoughts and very shallow, palpable emotions, it's really a masterpiece. Really good at breaking my heart long before the tragedy that gives it its title. It doesn't read like a book from its time, but, weirdly, like it was written a hundred years later. It's got an incredibly post-WW1 tone to it. And, of course, absolutely puts the lie to the idea that literary science fiction came about in the middle of the 20th Century.

My Brain is the Wakaba and Shiori Funtime Hour. With limited commercial interruption.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

And, The Last Man still stands as one of my favorite novels. Weird, thorough, full of purple prose and deep thoughts and very shallow, palpable emotions, it's really a masterpiece. Really good at breaking my heart long before the tragedy that gives it its title. It doesn't read like a book from its time, but, weirdly, like it was written a hundred years later. It's got an incredibly post-WW1 tone to it. And, of course, absolutely puts the lie to the idea that literary science fiction came about in the middle of the 20th Century.

I need to reread this as I too am very fond of it. Apart from the very visionary theme it is one of those novels that gain an added interest when we take into account its relationship with the author's life. Namely, how one of the characters is loosely modelled after Byron and how Mary Shelley used him to express her mixed emotions about the infamous man whose influence on her husband she often feared was less than healthy.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Wizard and Glass, book four of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

I am debating whether or not to skip the majority of the book, about a time in Roland's youth...which I always found incredibly bland, boring and unneeded. The glimpses into his upbringing from the first novel are very interesting and quite harrowing. But the entirety of the Wizard and Glass Tale reads like a schamltzy Romeo and Juliet retelling. Even Alan and Cuthbert somehow come across as one-dimensional characters and don't get me started on the half-assed romance. I hate not doing things in order - I never even watch individual anime episodes, for example, I either do a series run or nothing; the idea that I have watched one episodes more or less than the others bothers me somehow. The fact that I contemplating it shows you how much I dislike the book XD

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

I felt the same way of Wizard and Glass. That particular volume could have been omitted entirely from DT without affecting it greatly. The original Susannah affair did not do it for me either.It is a missed chance considering how interesting Roland's old world sems to be, judging from the hints we had in earlier volumes it came across as a rich mixture of Medieval and Western but once a closer contact proves it to be rather one-dimensional.

Eyes of Dragon takes place roughly in the same continuity (or one that is akin to it, at any rate, I am not sure whether there is any actual connection) and does a much better job at fleshing out the fictional universe.

I am still waiting for Kings Rising to arrive but the second volume of The Administration should get here first.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

It's been so long since I've read The Dreamthief's Daughter it's like a dream, itself, to me now. I really love the author Michael Moorcock has become, even if his patriarchal tones, irl and in fiction, can still come on a bit grating to me. He uses such gorgeously comfortable language, and is, I think, one of the finest authors we have in English today, for working with the inescapable fact that all people are ignorant of something at any given moment, but interpret things anyway. Like Kurt Vonnegut, he's market-savvy enough to know the right authorial tone will carry the right audience smoothly over the top of all sorts of pitfalls. If the patriarchal surety loses me, the tones of elegiac optimism do buoy me happily along, and who doesn't love a good old-fashioned hunt for the Holy Grail that isn't ever actually about the Grail, but whatever's missing in the hunters' lives?

I don't think I'll ever find a love for the early Elric stuff or the novel, The Eternal Champion, but his later work consistently makes me feel I should go back and give some of it another shot (which I rarely do, and won't be at this time).

My Brain is the Wakaba and Shiori Funtime Hour. With limited commercial interruption.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Sorry if it's a bit off-topic, but I just accidentally spent 2 hours comparing Harry Potter very unfavorably to Watership Down. Since that whole Magic in North America thing, (briefest summary: THIS SHIT IS RACIST AS FUCK) I'm getting to the point where I would very much like to bury any positive regard that has ever existed for the franchise.

Spoilers: Watership Down did everything Harry Potter wanted to do, but actually pulled it off instead of being a self-contradictory clusterfuck. I didn't exactly set out to reach that conclusion, but the more I dig into it, the clearer it becomes.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

That's not the first comparison that would come to mind for me, but I know that if I had to live in a world that had only Harry Potter or only Watership Down, I'd take the latter. Have you read the much-later anthology Tales from Watership Down? It's not the same as the original, and it isn't trying to be, but there are some winners of stories in there.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

I don't think I'll ever find a love for the early Elric stuff or the novel, The Eternal Champion, but his later work consistently makes me feel I should go back and give some of it another shot (which I rarely do, and won't be at this time).

I enjoy early Moorcock just because he's clearly enjoying himself so much—and unlike certain authors I could name, he manages to have fun while still doing something interesting with the "world-weary badass with a sword" plot hook that was already worn out in 1961. Stormbringer is basically sword and sorcery's End of Evangelion, as raw and unrelenting as that film was in destroying absolutely everyone and everything.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

I'm jumping around in Will Shetterly's How to make a Social Justice Warrior: On identitarianism, intersectionality, mobbing, racefail, and failfans 2005-2014, because it was free on the Kindle, and I don't think I've ever felt like binning everything I own from a writer, the way I feel like chucking out Shetterly's fiction, now. A very interesting book, Shetterly lets his inability to ever be wrong and some flat out racism get in the way of, well, anything useful. He literally insists that racism is barely a thing now because he had a fight online with a black woman and she went to a nice college but wouldn't tell him how she afforded it. That's not how evidence works, dude! That sort of thing kills anything smart or on point he has to say about other things.

Atropos wrote:

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

I don't think I'll ever find a love for the early Elric stuff or the novel, The Eternal Champion, but his later work consistently makes me feel I should go back and give some of it another shot (which I rarely do, and won't be at this time).

I enjoy early Moorcock just because he's clearly enjoying himself so much—and unlike certain authors I could name, he manages to have fun while still doing something interesting with the "world-weary badass with a sword" plot hook that was already worn out in 1961. Stormbringer is basically sword and sorcery's End of Evangelion, as raw and unrelenting as that film was in destroying absolutely everyone and everything.

Early Moorcock I'm good with, just not, well, the sword and sorcery stuff. I'm not huge on the genre, in general, which may be part of the problem. I couldn't barely even do the Elric-heavy chapters in The Dreamthief's Daughter.

My Brain is the Wakaba and Shiori Funtime Hour. With limited commercial interruption.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

YamPuff wrote:

I just got a review copy of his new book, but I'm putting it off until vacation. So looking forward.

Rereading The Further Adventures of Una Perrson and Catherine Cornelius in the Twentieth Century. So sweet, funny, and mildly horrific. Makes me nostalgic.

And, between other books, because it's written/printed in little bursts of anecdotes, I'm making my way through Live From New York, the oral history of Saturday Night Live. The trivia stuff are things you pretty much pick up other places anyway, but putting things in chronological order and seeing the in-fighting and drama is worth it. And, the really funny bits.

My Brain is the Wakaba and Shiori Funtime Hour. With limited commercial interruption.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

^ Do let me know what you think of it!

So I'm reading Carry On by Rainbow Rowell.

The story behind this novel is super weird; if you've read Fangirl you'll know that the main character writes fanfiction for a Harry Potter-esque series called 'Carry On, Simon'. Imagine if Draco was gay for Harry and Draco also happened to be a vampire and the two are roommates and you basically have the plot of 'Carry On'. It is fairly enjoyable, but I'm not sure if simply for the novelty of reading what amounts to gay Harry Potter? The world-building is not deep and relies heavily on the reader being familiar with Harry Potter; if you were familiar with neither Harry Potter nor Fangirl, would the novel make sense out of context? I don't know.

But it's actually quite good; the cast is diverse rather than white-centric (in a casual way, not like trying to shove a message down your throat), with some interesting commentary that can be applied to real life but also to the Potterverse. There are some quite good ideas in there; Baz is a vampire and part of an elite family that, during their rules, would never have let someone like him into Hogwarts, er, Watford. But the side he is supposed to hate and be against is the one that opened the school to anyone, even vampires like him. Simon is the chosen one with the most magic force anyone has ever seen before but can not control it and usually just uses a sword to hack his way out of problems or explodes with magic when he gets upset.

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Yay, books!! Most of the ones I want to read are manga and graphic novels, but hey, they're still books!I'm currently reading Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. It's... strange, but funny, and I'm into it so far. I'm also planning to read Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and the NausicaÃ¤ manga. I recently dropped Codename: Sailor V... it just didn't grab me as much as main story Sailor Moon (which I'm only two volumes into, but I'm getting there!)

YamPuff wrote:

So I'm reading Carry On by Rainbow Rowell.

Awesome!! I really wanna read more of Rowell's books; only one I have so far is Eleanor & Park, which I LOVED!

Re: Favorite books/Books you are currently reading

Rereading Derrida's Speech and Phenomena for the first time in a long, long time. Realizing how much otherwise useless German I know just from critical theory and linguistics. My department is lousy with Lit and languages people, so I'm the lone Critical person, unless you go over the PoliSci or Communism.

I don't usually feel that too powerfully, but then I read something like this, and it becomes everything.

My Brain is the Wakaba and Shiori Funtime Hour. With limited commercial interruption.